Читать книгу Jane Seton; or, The King's Advocate. A Scottish Historical Romance онлайн

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Charged with an invitation, secretly obtained from the queen, for the ladies of Ashkirk, Roland was in high spirits, for he had procured it through the influence of Madame de Montreuil, the governess of Magdalene; and, with his face all smiles, he sprung from his horse and entered the mansion.

Lady Jane disappeared from the window.

Then Redhall ground his teeth, and turned furiously away, for then he knew the happy lovers had met, and were together.

He hurriedly left his house, and descending the Blackfriars Wynd to the Archiepiscopal Palace, a fragment of which is still prominent by its large octagon tower which overhangs the Cowgate, he was admitted by the cardinal's armed vassals, or guards, at a low-browed doorway, surmounted by the coat armorial of Bethune and Balfour, over which was the broad-tasselled hat, which indicates a prince of the holy Roman empire.

There, at dinner, Redhall heard from his friend, the Abbot of Kinloss, the rumour which was then current in the city, that "the master of the king's ordnance had been most malapertly beset upon the Hiegait by a party of the Douglas traitors," from whom he had been only saved by a miraculous exertion of valour; for (as Buchanan relates) whatever happened in those days was invariably placed to the score of the Douglases.